As garbage islands floating in the Pacific Ocean have grown to the area of entire countries, Japan and other nations’ use of plastic fishing nets is believed to not only take a major toll on sea life, but is even threatening the future of the fishing industry itself.
Human Rights Watch issued a report earlier this month urging world leaders to move forward with a ban on autonomous weapons systems. This latest plea comes nearly a decade after the organization co-founded the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and as advanced military drones are operating in the skies over Ukraine.
It’s difficult for me to root for Japan teams in general. It’s not an issue of nationality. It’s a matter of how Japan as a society approaches international sports; we take all the fun out of it.
The proliferation of basement housing in Seoul, South Korea, has proven in recent years to make the city particularly vulnerable to flooding which results in loss of life and extensive property damage. The metropolitan government has pledged to act.
Concerns about the Unification Church’s fundraising activities in Japan have spiraled in the weeks following the assassination of Shinzo Abe; the momentum of public outrage now threatens to carry matters too far.
South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-Yeol is reinstating his nation’s “Kill Chain” strategy, which aims to deter an attack from North Korea by brandishing a highly aggressive military doctrine.
Unemployed loner Tetsuya Yamagami hoped to use his homemade shotgun on Shinzo Abe not mainly to kill Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, but to take his revenge on the Unification Church, which he blamed for destroying his life and that of his family. Improbably, the assassination has become a wild political success.
It was exactly a month ago today that Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Nara by 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami. As the passions of that event begin to settle, this is an opportune occasion to reconsider both the benefits and the costs of an administration which lasted longer than any other in Japanese history.
A year and a half after the brutal military coup, responses to the crisis in Myanmar remain muted, including towards the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya people.
As US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departs for an Asian trip that may include a stop in Taiwan, anti-war voices are sounding the alarm over a visit they say would needlessly provoke China during a time of already heightened global tensions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
